Samuel Hopkins Adams - The Clarion

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The light of slaying was in her eyes, as she stiffened her arm. Just a
fraction of an inch the arm swerved, for a streak of light was darting
toward her. Hal had taken the only chance. He had flung his cane,
whirling, in the hope of diverting her aim, and had followed it at a
leap.

The two shots were almost instantaneous. At the second, the quack reeled
back against the wall. The girl turned swiftly upon Hal, and as he
seized her he felt the cold steel against his neck. The touch seemed to
paralyze him. Strangely enough, the thought of death was summed up in a
vast, regretful curiosity to know why all this was happening. Then the
weapon fell.

"I can't kill _you_!" cried the girl, in a bursting sob, and fell, face
down, upon the floor.

Hal, snatching up the revolver, ran to his father.

"I'm all right," declared the quack. "Only the shoulder. Just winged.
Get me a drink from that decanter."

His son obeyed. With swift, careful hands he got the coat off the
bulky-muscled arm, and saw, with a heart-lifting relief, that the bullet
had hardly more than grazed the flesh. Meantime the girl had crawled,
still sobbing, to a chair.

"Did I kill him?" she asked, covering her eyes against what she might
see.

"No," said Hal.

"Listen," commanded Dr. Surtaine. "Some one's coming. Keep quiet." He
walked steadily to the door and called out, "It's nothing. Just
experimenting with a new pistol. Go back to your bed."

"Who was it?" asked Hal.

"The housekeeper. There's just one thing to do for the sake of all of
us. This has _got_ to be hushed up. I'm going out to telephone. Don't
let her get away, Hal."

"Get away! Oh, my God!" breathed the girl.

Hal walked over to her, his heart wrung with pity.

"Why did you come here to kill my father, Milly?" he asked.

She stooped to pick up the "Happy Lady" clipping from the floor.

"That's why," she said.

"Good God!" said Hal. "Have you been taking that--those pills?"

"Taking 'em? Yes, and believing in 'em, till I found out it was all
damned lies. And your fine and noble and honest 'Clarion' advertises the
lies just as your fine and noble and honest father makes the pills.
They're no good. Do you get that? And when I came here and told your
father he'd got to help me out of my trouble, what do you think he told
me? That I'd lost my job at the factory!"

"Who is the man, Milly?"

"What business is that of yours?"

"I'll go after him and see that he marries you if it takes--"

"Oh, he'd be only too glad to marry me if he could. He can't. Poor Max
has got a wife somewhere--"

"Max? It's Veltman!" cried Hal. "The dirty scoundrel."

"Oh, don't blame Max," said the girl wearily. "It isn't his fault. After
you threw me down"--Hal winced--"I started to run wild. It's the
Hardscrabbler in me. I took to drinking and running around, and Max
pulled me out of it, and I went to live with him. I didn't care. Nothing
mattered, anyway. And I wasn't afraid of anything like this happening,
because I thought the pills made it all safe."

Here Dr. Surtaine reappeared. "I've got a detective coming that I can
trust."

"A detective?" cried Hal. "Oh, Dad--"

"You keep out of this," retorted his father, in a tone such as his son
had never heard from him before. "I guess you've done enough. The
question is"--he continued as regardless of Milly as if she had been
deaf--"how to hush her up."

"You've had your chance to hush me up," said the girl sullenly.

"Any money within reason--"

"I don't want your money."

"Listen here, then. You tried to murder me. That's ten years in State's
prison. Now, if ever I hear of you opening your mouth about this, I'll
send you up. I guess that will keep you quiet. Now, then, what's your
answer?"

"Give me a glass of whiskey, and I'll tell you."

Hal poured her out a glass. She passed a swift hand above it.

"Here's peace and quiet in the proprietary medicine business," she said,
and drank. "I guess that'll--make--some--stir," she added, with an
effect of carefully timing her words.

Her body lapsed quite gently back into the chair. The two men ran and
bent over her as the glass tinkled and rolled on the floor. There was an
acrid, bitter scent in the air. They lifted their heads, and their eyes
met in a haggard realization. No longer was there any need of hushing up
Milly Neal.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE PARTING

The doorbell buzzed.

"That's the detective," said Dr. Surtaine to Hal. "Stay here."

He wormed himself painfully into an overcoat which concealed his
scarified shoulder, and went out. In a few moments he and the officer
reappeared. The latter glanced at the body.

"Heart disease, you say?" he asked.

"Yes: valvular lesion."

"Better 'phone the coroner's office, eh?"

"Not necessary. I can give a certificate. The coroner will be all
right," said Dr. Surtaine, with an assurance derived from the fact that
a year before he had given that functionary five hundred dollars for not
finding morphine in the stomach of a baby who had been dosed to death on
the "Sure Soother" powders.

"That goes," agreed the detective. "What undertaker?"

"Any. And, Murtha, while you're at the 'phone, call up the 'Clarion'
office and tell McGuire Ellis to come up here on the jump, will you?"

Left to themselves, with the body between them, father and son fell into
a silence, instinct with the dread of estranging speech. Hal made the
first effort.

"Your shoulder?" he said.

"Nothing," declared the Doctor. "Later on will do for that." He brooded
for a time. "You can trust Ellis, can you?"

"Absolutely."

"It's the newspapers we have to look out for. Everything else is easy."

He conducted the detective, who had finished telephoning, into the
library, set out drinks and cigars for him and returned. Nothing further
was said until Ellis arrived. The associate editor's face, as he looked
from the dead girl to Hal, was both sorrowful and stern. But he was
there to act; not to judge or comment. He consulted his watch.

"Eleven forty-five," he said. "Better give out the story to-night."

"Why not wait till to-morrow?" asked Dr. Surtaine.

"The longer you wait, the more it will look like suppressing it."

"But we _want_ to suppress it."

"Certainly," agreed Ellis. "I'm telling you the best way. Fix the story
up for the 'Clarion' and the other papers will follow our lead."

"If we can arrange a story that they'll believe--" began Hal.

"Oh, they won't believe it! Not the kind of story we want to print. They
aren't fools. But that won't make any difference."

"I should think it would be just the sort of possible scandal our
enemies would catch at."

"You've still got a lot to learn about the newspaper game," replied his
subordinate contemptuously. "One newspaper doesn't print a scandal about
the owner of another. It's an unwritten law. They'll publish just what
we tell 'em to--as we would if it was their dis--I mean misfortune.
Come, now," he added, in a hard, businesslike voice, "what are we going
to call the cause of death?"

"Miss Neal died of heart disease."

"Call it heart disease," confirmed the other. "Circumstances?"

This was a poser. Dr. Surtaine and Hal looked at each other and looked
away again.

"How would this do?" suggested Ellis briskly. "Miss Neal came here to
consult Dr. Surtaine on an emergency in her department at the factory,
was taken ill while waiting, and was dead when he--No; that don't fit.
If she died without medical attendance, the coroner would have to give a
permit for removal. Died shortly after Dr. Surtaine's arrival in spite
of his efforts to revive her; that's it!"

"Just about how it happened," said Dr. Surtaine gratefully.

"For publication. Now give me the real facts--under that overcoat of
yours."

Dr. Surtaine started, and winced as the movement tweaked the raw nerves
of his wound. "There's nothing else to tell," he said.

"You brought me here to lie for you," said the journalist. "All right,
I'm ready. But if I'm to lie and not get caught at it, I must know the
truth. Now, when I see a man wearing an overcoat over a painful arm, and
discover what looks like a new bullet hole in the wall of the room, I
think a dead body may mean something more than heart disease."

"I don't see--" began the charlatan.

But Hal cut him short. "For God's sake," he cried in a voice which
seemed to gouge its way through his straining throat, "let's have done
with lies for once." And he blurted out the whole story, eking out what
he lacked in detail, by insistent questioning of his father.

When they came to the part about the Relief Pills, Ellis looked up with
a bitter grin.

"Works out quite logically, doesn't it?" he observed. Then, walking over
to the body, he looked down into the face, with a changed expression.
"Poor little girl!" he muttered. "Poor little Kitty!" He whirled swiftly
upon the Surtaines. "By God, _I'd_ like to write her story!" he cried.
The outburst was but momentary. Instantly he was his cool, capable self
again.

"You've had experience in this sort of thing before, I suppose?" he
inquired of Dr. Surtaine.

"Yes. No! Whaddye mean?" blustered the quack.

"Only that you'll know how to fix the police and the coroner."

"No call for any fixing."

"So all that I have to do is to handle the newspapers," pursued the
other imperturbably. "All right. There'll be no more than a paragraph in
any paper to-morrow. 'Working-Girl Drops Dead,' or something like that.
You can sleep easy, gentlemen."

So obvious was the taunt that Hal stared at his friend, astounded. Upon
the Doctor it made no impression.

"Say, Ellis. Do something for me, will you?" he requested. "Wire to
Belford Couch, the Willard, Washington, to come on here by first train."

"Couch? Oh, that's Certina Charley, isn't it? Your professional fixer?"

"Never mind what he is. You'll be sure to do it, won't you?"

"No. Do it yourself," said Ellis curtly, and walked out without a
good-night.

"Well, whaddye think of that!" spluttered Dr. Surtaine. "That fellow's
getting the big-head."

Hal made no reply. He had dropped into a chair and now sat with his head
between his hands. When he raised his face it was haggard as if with
famine.

"Dad, I'm going away."

"Where?" demanded his father, startled.

"Anywhere, away from this house."

"No wonder you're shaken, Boyee," said the other soothingly. "We'll talk
about it in the morning. After a night's rest--"

"In this house? I couldn't close my eyes for fear of what I'd see!"

"It's been a tough business. I'll give you a sleeping powder."

"No; I've got to think this out: this whole business of the Relief
Pills."

Dr. Surtaine was instantly on the defensive. "Don't go getting any
sentimental notions now, Hal. It's a perfectly legal business."

"So much the worse for the law, then."

"You talk like an anarchist!" returned his father, shocked. "Do you want
to be better than the law?"

"If the law permits murder--I do," said Hal, very low.

Indignation rose up within Dr. Surtaine: not wholly unjustified,
considering his belief that Hal was primarily responsible for the
tragedy. "Are your hands so clean, then?" he asked significantly.

"God knows, they're not!" cried the son, with passion. "I didn't know. I
didn't realize."

"Yet you turn on me--"

"Oh, Dad, I don't want to quarrel with you. All I know is, I can't stay
in this house any more."

Dr. Surtaine pondered for a few minutes. Perhaps it was better that the
boy should go for a time, until his conscience worked out a more
satisfactory state of mind. His own conscience was clear. He was doing
business within the limits set for him by the law and the Post Office
authorities, which had once investigated the "Pills" and given them a
clean bill. Milly Neal should not put the onus of her own recklessness
and immorality upon him. Nevertheless, he was glad that Belford Couch
was coming on; and, by the way, he must telephone a dispatch to him.
Rising, he addressed his son.

"Where shall you go?"

"I don't know. Some hotel. The Dunstan."

"Very well. I'll see you at the office soon, I suppose. Good-night."

All Hal's world whirled about him as he saw his father leave the room.
What seemed to him a monstrous manifestation of chance had overwhelmed
and swept him from all moorings. But was it chance? Was it not, rather,
as McGuire Ellis had suggested, the exemplification of an exact logic?

The closing of the door behind his father sent a current of air across
the room in which a bit of paper on the floor wavered and turned. Hal
picked it up. It was the clipping from the "Clarion"--his
newspaper--which Milly Neal had brought as her justification. One line
of print stood out, writhing as if in an uncontrollable access of
diabolic glee: "Only $1 A Box: Satisfaction Guaranteed"; and above it
the face of the Happy Lady, distorted by the crumpling of the paper,
smirked up at him with a taunt. He thought to interpret that taunt in
the words which Veltman had used, aforetime:--

"What's _your_ percentage?"

CHAPTER XXVII

THE GREATER TEMPTING

Journalistic Worthington ran true to type in the Milly Neal affair. No
newspaper published more than a paragraph about the "sudden death."
Suicide was not even hinted at in print. But newspaperdom had its own
opinion, magnified and colored by the processes of gossip, over which
professional courtesy exercised no control. That the girl had killed
herself was generally understood: that there had been a shooting,
previous to her death, was also current. Eager report recalled and
exaggerated the fact that she had been seen with Hal Surtaine at a
dubious road-house some months previous. The popular "inside knowledge"
of the tragedy was that Milly had gone to the Surtaine mansion to force
Hal's hand, failing in which she had shot him, inflicting an
inconsiderable wound, and then killed herself; and that Dr. Surtaine had
thereupon turned his son out of the house. Hal's removal to the hotel
served to bear out this surmise, and the Doctor's strategic effort to
cover the situation by giving it out that his son's part of the mansion
was being remodeled--even going to the lengths of actually setting a
force of men to work there--failed to convince the gossips.

Between the two men, the situation was now most difficult. Quite
instinctively Hal had fallen in with his father's theory that the primal
necessity, after the tragedy, was to keep everything out of print. That
by so doing he wholly subverted his own hard-won policy did not, in the
stress of the crisis, occur to him. Later he realized it. Yet he could
see no other course of action as having been possible to him. The mere
plain facts of the case constituted an accusation against Dr. Surtaine,
unthinkable for a son to publish against his father. And Hal still
cozened himself into a belief in the quack's essential innocence,
persuading his own reason that there was a blind side to the man which
rendered it impossible for him to see through the legal into the ethical
phases of the question. By this method he was saving his loyalty and
affection. But so profound had been the shock that he could not, for a
time, endure the constant companionship of former days. Consequently the
frequent calls which Dr. Surtaine deemed it expedient to make for the
sake of appearances, at Hal's hotel, resulted in painful, rambling,
topic-shifting talks, devoid of any human touch other than the pitiful
and thwarted affection of two personalities at hopeless odds. "Least
said soonest mended" was a favorite aphorism of the experienced quack.
But in this tangle it failed him. It was he who first touched on the
poisoned theme.

"Look here, Boy-ee," said he, a week after the burial. "We're both
scared to death of what each of us is thinking. Let's agree to forget
this until you are ready to talk it out with me."

"What good will talk do?" said Hal drearily.

"None at present." His father sighed. He had hoped for a clean breast of
it, a confession of the intrigue that should leave the way open to a
readjustment of relations. "So let's put the whole thing aside."

"All right," agreed Hal listlessly. "I suppose you know," he added,
"before we close the subject, that I've ordered the Relief Pills
advertising out of the 'Clarion.'"

"You needn't have bothered. It won't be offered again."

Silence fell between them. "I've about decided to quit that line," the
charlatan resumed with an obvious effort. "Not that it isn't strictly
legal," he added, falling back upon his reserve defense. "But it's too
troublesome. The copy is ticklish; I've had to write all those ads.
myself. And, at that, there's some newspapers won't accept 'em and
others that want to edit 'em. Belford Couch and I have been going over
the whole matter. He's the diplomat of the concern. And we've about
decided to sell out. Anyway," he added, brightening, "there ain't hardly
money enough in a side-line like the Pills to pay for the trouble of
running it separate."

If Dr. Surtaine had looked for explicit approval of his virtuous
resolution, he was disappointed. Yet Hal experienced, or tried to
believe that he experienced, a certain factitious glow of satisfaction
at this proof that his father was ready to give up an evil thing even
without being fully convinced of its wrongfulness. This helped the son
to feel that, at least, his sacrifice had been made for a worthy
affection. Still, he had no word to say except that he must get to the
office. The Doctor left with gloom upon his handsome face.

With McGuire Ellis, Hal's association had become even more difficult
than with the Doctor. Since his abrupt and unceremonious departure from
the room of death, in the belief in Hal's guilt, Ellis had maintained a
purely professional attitude toward his employer. For a time, in his
wretchedness and turmoil of spirit, Hal had scarcely noticed Ellis's
withdrawal of fellowship, vaguely attributing his silence to unexpressed
sympathy. But later, when he broached the subject of Milly's death, he
was met with a stony avoidance which inspired both astonishment and
resentment. Sub-normal as he now was in nervous strength and tension, he
shrank from having it out with Ellis. But he felt, for the first time in
his life, forlorn and friendless.

On his part McGuire Ellis brooded over a deep anger. He was not a man to
yield lightly of his best; but he had given to Hal, first a fine
loyalty, and later, as they grew into closer association, a warm if
rather reticent affection. For the rough idealist had found in his
employer an idealism not always as clear and intelligent as his own, yet
often higher and finer; and along with the professional protectiveness
which he had assumed over the younger man's inexperience had come an
honest admiration and far-reaching hopes. Now he saw in his chief one
who had betrayed his cause through a weak and selfish indulgence. The
clear-sighted journalist knew that the newspaper owner with a shameful
secret binds his own power in the coils of that secret. And fatally in
error as he was as to the nature of the entanglement in which Hal was
involved, he foresaw the inevitable effect of the situation upon the
"Clarion." Moreover, he was bitterly disappointed in Hal as a man. Had
his superior "gone on the loose" and contracted a _liaison_ with some
woman of the outer world, Ellis would have passed over the abstract
morality of the question. But to take advantage of a girl in his own
employ, and then so cruelly to leave her to her fate,--there was rot at
the heart of the man who could do that. The excision of the offending
"Relief Pills" ad. after the culmination of the tragedy, was simply a
sop to hypocrisy.

Only once had Ellis made any reference to Milly's death. On the day of
her funeral Max Veltman had disappeared, without notice. A week later he
reported for duty, shaken and pallid.

"Do you want to take him back?" Ellis inquired of Hal.

Hal's first impulse was to say "No"; but he conquered it, remembering
Milly Neal's pitiful generosity toward her lover.

"Where has he been?" he asked.

"Drunk, I guess."

"What do you think?"

"I think yes."

"All right, if he's sobered up. Tell him it mustn't happen again."

There was a gleam in McGuire Ellis's eye. "Suppose _you_ tell him that
it mustn't happen again. It would come with more force from you."

Hal whirled in his chair. "Mac, what's the matter with you?"

"Nothing. I was just thinking of 'Kitty the Cutie.'"

"What were you thinking of her?"

"Only that Max Veltman would have gone through hell-fire for her. And,
from his looks, he's been through and had the heart burned out of him."

With that he resumed his proof-reading in a dogged silence.

To Hal's great relief Veltman kept out of his way. The man seemed dazed
with misery, but did his work well enough. Rumors reached the office
that he was striving to gain a refuge from his sufferings by giving all
his leisure hours to work in the Rookeries district, under the direction
of the Reverend Norman Hale. Ellis was of the opinion that his mind was
somewhat affected, and that he would bear watching a bit; and was the
more disturbed in that Veltman shared the secret of the great epidemic
"spread," now practically completed for the "Clarion's" publishing or
suppressing. Ellis held the belief that, now, Hal would order it
suppressed. The man who had shirked his responsibility to Milly Neal
could hardly be relied on for the stamina necessary to such an
exploitation.

The time was at hand for the decision to be made. The two physicians,
Elliot and Merritt, pressed for publication. Every day, they pointed
out, not only meant a further risk of life, but also increased the
impending danger of a general outburst which would find the city wholly
unprepared. On the other hand, the journalists, Ellis and Wayne, held
out for delay. They perceived the one weak point in their case, that
neither a dead body nor a living patient had as yet come to the hands of
the constituted authorities for diagnosis. The sole determination had
been made on corpses carried across the line and now probably impossible
of identification. The committee fund was doing its work of concealment
effectually. But Fate tripped the strategy board at last, using the
Reverend Norman Hale as its agent.

Since Milly Neal's death, the Reverend Norman had tried to find time to
call on Hal Surtaine, and had failed. He wished to talk with him about
Veltman. Three days after the funeral he had hauled the "Clarion's"
foreman out of the gutter, stood between him and suicide for one savage
night of struggle, and listened to the remorse of a haunted soul. Being
a man and a brother, the Reverend Norman forbore blame or admonition;
being a physician of the inner being, he devised work for the wreck in
his slums, and had driven him relentlessly that he might find peace in
the service of others. Slowly the man won back to sanity. One obsession
persisted, however, disturbing to the clergyman. Veltman was willing to
do penance himself, in any possible way, but he insisted that, since the
Surtaines shared his guilt, they, too, must make amends, before his dead
mistress could rest in her grave. Apprised by Veltman of the whole
wretched story, Hale secretly sympathized with this view of the
Surtaines' responsibility. But he was concerned lest, in Veltman, it
take some form of direct vengeance. When he learned that Veltman had
returned to the "Clarion" composing-room to work, the minister, unable
to spare time for a call from his almost sleepless activities, sent an
urgent request to Hal to meet him at the Recreation Club. Hal being out,
Ellis got the note, observed the "Immediate and Important" on the
envelope, read the contents, and set out for the rendezvous.

He never got there. For at the corner of Sperry Street he was met by a
messenger who knew him.

"The back room at McManey's," said the urchin. "He's in there, waitin'."

Ellis entered the place. At a table sat the Reverend Norman Hale, with
an expression of radiant happiness on his gaunt face. The barkeeper,
who, on his own initiative, had just brought in a steaming hot drink,
stood watching him with unfeigned concern. Hale welcomed Ellis warmly,
and drew a chair close for him.

"You sent for Mr. Surtaine," said Ellis.

"Did I?" asked the other vaguely. "I forget. It doesn't matter. Nothing
matters, now. Ellis, I've found out the secret."

"What secret?"

"The great secret. The solution," replied the young minister, buoyantly.
"All that is necessary is to get the bodies."

"Yes, of course," agreed the other, with rising uneasiness. "But they
smuggle them out as fast--"

"They won't when I've told them. McGuire Ellis,"--he gripped his
companion suddenly with fingers that clamped like a burning vise,--"_I
can bring the dead back to life_."

"Tell me about it. But take a swallow of this first." Ellis pushed the
hot drink toward him. "You're cold."

"Nothing but excitement. The glory of it! All this suffering and grief
and death--"

"Wait a minute. I want a drink myself."

He turned to the bartender. "Get an auto," he whispered. "Quick!"

"There's a rig outside," said the man. "I seen he was sick when he came
in, so I sent for it."

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